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U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived at Bagram Air Base Friday on an unannounced visit, one year into a new White House strategy for Afghanistan.

Despite a surge in violence, Mattis and other top U.S. officials insist President Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy, announced in August 2017, is helping bring the conflict to an end.

“Right now we have more indications that reconciliation is no longer just a shimmer out there, no longer just a mirage,” Mattis told reporters while flying to India Tuesday.

Mattis pointed to “open lines of communication,” but stopped short of confirming U.S.-Taliban talks reportedly held in Qatar in late July.

“Reconciliation reinforced by the State Department — it’s put additional staff into the embassy with that sole effort — you’re seeing this now pick up traction,” he said.

This is Mattis’ fourth visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary. Earlier, Mattis visited New Delhi, where he praised India’s economic and development assistance to Afghanistan.

New phase of conflict

This week Army General Scott Miller took over as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the ninth U.S. general to lead the 17-year-old war.

Miller will be tasked with guiding the conflict into a reconciliation-focused phase, even while both sides ramp up attacks.

On Wednesday, a twin suicide bombing at a wrestling club in a predominantly Shiite area of Kabul killed at least 26 people, including two journalists.

The Afghanistan branch of Islamic State, known as ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for the attack. ISIS-K has proved resilient, even while doing battle with both the Taliban and U.S.-led forces.

Last week, the U.S. military announced it killed the leader of ISIS-K, Abu Saad Orakzai. He is the third ISIS-K leader to be killed since 2016.

The Taliban has also stepped up attacks. Last month, the insurgents launched a multifront offensive, overrunning at least two Afghan military bases and temporarily capturing parts of the key city of Ghazni.

The surge in Taliban violence may be meant to secure a better negotiating position ahead of future negotiations, says Ahmed Shuja, a Fulbright scholar and Afghan analyst.

“There has been serious overtures from the side of the Taliban but also from the American side for the last year or more actually,” he said. “And so we are I think at this point closer to a peace process than we have been in the last few years.”

Pakistan’s role

But U.S. officials have expressed frustration at what they see as Pakistan’s lingering support for Taliban militants on their side of the border.

The U.S. last week withheld $300 million from Pakistan’s military “due to a lack of Pakistani decisive actions in support of the South Asia Strategy.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week visited Islamabad, where he spoke of a “reset” in relations with Pakistan.

Pakistan, which denies sheltering Taliban militants, has a new government, led by former cricketer Imran Khan.

Mattis appears to hold out hope the new government will change its policies on Afghanistan.

“We do expect that Pakistan will be part of a community of nations that gives no haven to terrorism,” he said.
…

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis arrived at Bagram Air Base Friday on an unannounced visit, one year into a new White House strategy for Afghanistan.

Despite a surge in violence, Mattis and other top U.S. officials insist President Donald Trump’s South Asia strategy, announced in August 2017, is helping bring the conflict to an end.

“Right now we have more indications that reconciliation is no longer just a shimmer out there, no longer just a mirage,” Mattis told reporters while flying to India Tuesday.

Mattis pointed to “open lines of communication,” but stopped short of confirming U.S.-Taliban talks reportedly held in Qatar in late July.

“Reconciliation reinforced by the State Department — it’s put additional staff into the embassy with that sole effort — you’re seeing this now pick up traction,” he said.

This is Mattis’ fourth visit to Afghanistan as defense secretary. Earlier, Mattis visited New Delhi, where he praised India’s economic and development assistance to Afghanistan.

New phase of conflict

This week Army General Scott Miller took over as top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, the ninth U.S. general to lead the 17-year-old war.

Miller will be tasked with guiding the conflict into a reconciliation-focused phase, even while both sides ramp up attacks.

On Wednesday, a twin suicide bombing at a wrestling club in a predominantly Shiite area of Kabul killed at least 26 people, including two journalists.

The Afghanistan branch of Islamic State, known as ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for the attack. ISIS-K has proved resilient, even while doing battle with both the Taliban and U.S.-led forces.

Last week, the U.S. military announced it killed the leader of ISIS-K, Abu Saad Orakzai. He is the third ISIS-K leader to be killed since 2016.

The Taliban has also stepped up attacks. Last month, the insurgents launched a multifront offensive, overrunning at least two Afghan military bases and temporarily capturing parts of the key city of Ghazni.

The surge in Taliban violence may be meant to secure a better negotiating position ahead of future negotiations, says Ahmed Shuja, a Fulbright scholar and Afghan analyst.

“There has been serious overtures from the side of the Taliban but also from the American side for the last year or more actually,” he said. “And so we are I think at this point closer to a peace process than we have been in the last few years.”

Pakistan’s role

But U.S. officials have expressed frustration at what they see as Pakistan’s lingering support for Taliban militants on their side of the border.

The U.S. last week withheld $300 million from Pakistan’s military “due to a lack of Pakistani decisive actions in support of the South Asia Strategy.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week visited Islamabad, where he spoke of a “reset” in relations with Pakistan.

Pakistan, which denies sheltering Taliban militants, has a new government, led by former cricketer Imran Khan.

Mattis appears to hold out hope the new government will change its policies on Afghanistan.

“We do expect that Pakistan will be part of a community of nations that gives no haven to terrorism,” he said.
…

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is not expected to travel to Afghanistan on his latest overseas trip, but efforts to stabilize the war-torn country are high on the agenda for his Pakistan and India visits. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is joining Pompeo in India, and he told reporters aboard his plane on route to Delhi that attempts to end the 17-year-old U.S.-led war in Afghanistan are gaining traction. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is not expected to travel to Afghanistan on his latest overseas trip, but efforts to stabilize the war-torn country are high on the agenda for his Pakistan and India visits. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is joining Pompeo in India, and he told reporters aboard his plane on route to Delhi that attempts to end the 17-year-old U.S.-led war in Afghanistan are gaining traction. VOA Diplomatic Correspondent Cindy Saine has more from the State Department.
…

Within 25 days, President Donald Trump will make a decision that will affect tens of thousands of refugees.

On Wednesday, advocates lobbying members of Congress on Capitol Hill pressed for that number to be 75,000.

Last year, Trump wanted it to be no more than 45,000.

The reality in the last 11 months is closer to 20,000.

“It is very difficult right now,” Pastor Mike Wilker told 21 activists-in-training in a basement meeting room of his Capitol Hill parish, two blocks from Congress. “It gets depressing.”

By the end of September, Trump will have consulted with federal lawmakers and, with advice from agencies like the State Department, he will make a presidential determination about the maximum number of refugees the U.S. will allow in during the coming fiscal year, which starts October 1.

The volunteers took off after a few hours of training from LIRS, a national refugee resettlement organization, and Lutheran Social Services-National Capital Area, its local affiliate that hosted the event. They split into groups of two, three, sometimes more, and walked toward the offices of 19 U.S. representatives and senators — mostly Democrats, with a few Republicans.

It’s an issue, said Fiona Tomlin of Veterans for American Ideals, that “crosscuts members of every political stripe.”

Special immigrant visas

The Trump administration zealously curbed refugee arrivals within a week of Trump’s inauguration. Since then, through various lawsuits and iterations of the president’s order, the U.S. refugee program is a whisper of its former self. And the changes reach into special immigrant visa categories known as SIVs for Iraqis and Afghans who aided the U.S. government since the U.S. military interventions in those countries in the early 2000s.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Anne Derse studied the talking points about refugees during a break Wednesday before the congressional meetings. She’s retired now, on the cusp of becoming a deacon in the Episcopal Church after three decades of serving as a diplomat, including time in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Her son — a captain in the U.S. Marines — served in both countries as well, and her former bodyguard came to the U.S. through a special immigrant visa for longtime embassy workers overseas. 

“I’ve seen how important it is to have the support of these kinds of people that we bring into the U.S. under the Special Immigrant Visa program,” said Derse. “It’s really important from a national security perspective. We made a promise, and we need to keep that promise … and I believe we have an obligation, in the bigger picture, to welcome refugees.”

So the 20-odd, newly minted advocates prepared.

They asked questions about why they should ask members of Congress to consider a 75,000-refugee cap for 2019 when that feels so unrealistic in the current political climate. (“If we say 50 [thousand] or 45 [thousand], what kind of message are we sending? Are we giving up …?” Javier Cuebas, of LIRS, said in explaining the decision to aim higher.) They decided who would tell what personal anecdotes during their meetings — the refugee family their church welcomed, the apartment their synagogue prepared for an SIV recipient, the fact that an organization that resettled 1,330 people last year is serving about 400 this year.

Making the case

The office of Representative Blumenauer is friendly territory for them. The Oregon Democrat not only supports the SIV program, he’s sponsored a bill to add more visas. There’s a modified American flag over the reception desk that says “In our America … immigrants and refugees are welcome.” An aide is waiting to meet the quintet of advocates. 

Wilker, who ministers to a congregation on Capitol Hill that has facilitated the arrivals of SIV families, tells the aide he’s worried about the destruction of the immigration and refugee resettlement program.

“I can understand the need for double-checking,” he says of the Trump administration’s claims that additional security measures were needed for refugees and SIVs, “ … but we’re breaking promises left and right to these people.”
…

Within 25 days, President Donald Trump will make a decision that will affect tens of thousands of refugees.

On Wednesday, advocates lobbying members of Congress on Capitol Hill pressed for that number to be 75,000.

Last year, Trump wanted it to be no more than 45,000.

The reality in the last 11 months is closer to 20,000.

“It is very difficult right now,” Pastor Mike Wilker told 21 activists-in-training in a basement meeting room of his Capitol Hill parish, two blocks from Congress. “It gets depressing.”

By the end of September, Trump will have consulted with federal lawmakers and, with advice from agencies like the State Department, he will make a presidential determination about the maximum number of refugees the U.S. will allow in during the coming fiscal year, which starts October 1.

The volunteers took off after a few hours of training from LIRS, a national refugee resettlement organization, and Lutheran Social Services-National Capital Area, its local affiliate that hosted the event. They split into groups of two, three, sometimes more, and walked toward the offices of 19 U.S. representatives and senators — mostly Democrats, with a few Republicans.

It’s an issue, said Fiona Tomlin of Veterans for American Ideals, that “crosscuts members of every political stripe.”

Special immigrant visas

The Trump administration zealously curbed refugee arrivals within a week of Trump’s inauguration. Since then, through various lawsuits and iterations of the president’s order, the U.S. refugee program is a whisper of its former self. And the changes reach into special immigrant visa categories known as SIVs for Iraqis and Afghans who aided the U.S. government since the U.S. military interventions in those countries in the early 2000s.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan Anne Derse studied the talking points about refugees during a break Wednesday before the congressional meetings. She’s retired now, on the cusp of becoming a deacon in the Episcopal Church after three decades of serving as a diplomat, including time in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Her son — a captain in the U.S. Marines — served in both countries as well, and her former bodyguard came to the U.S. through a special immigrant visa for longtime embassy workers overseas. 

“I’ve seen how important it is to have the support of these kinds of people that we bring into the U.S. under the Special Immigrant Visa program,” said Derse. “It’s really important from a national security perspective. We made a promise, and we need to keep that promise … and I believe we have an obligation, in the bigger picture, to welcome refugees.”

So the 20-odd, newly minted advocates prepared.

They asked questions about why they should ask members of Congress to consider a 75,000-refugee cap for 2019 when that feels so unrealistic in the current political climate. (“If we say 50 [thousand] or 45 [thousand], what kind of message are we sending? Are we giving up …?” Javier Cuebas, of LIRS, said in explaining the decision to aim higher.) They decided who would tell what personal anecdotes during their meetings — the refugee family their church welcomed, the apartment their synagogue prepared for an SIV recipient, the fact that an organization that resettled 1,330 people last year is serving about 400 this year.

Making the case

The office of Representative Blumenauer is friendly territory for them. The Oregon Democrat not only supports the SIV program, he’s sponsored a bill to add more visas. There’s a modified American flag over the reception desk that says “In our America … immigrants and refugees are welcome.” An aide is waiting to meet the quintet of advocates. 

Wilker, who ministers to a congregation on Capitol Hill that has facilitated the arrivals of SIV families, tells the aide he’s worried about the destruction of the immigration and refugee resettlement program.

“I can understand the need for double-checking,” he says of the Trump administration’s claims that additional security measures were needed for refugees and SIVs, “ … but we’re breaking promises left and right to these people.”
…

Tropical Storm Gordon weakened Wednesday into a tropical depression, while forecasters kept their eyes on a strong storm churning in the Atlantic.

Gordon never strengthened into a hurricane but still brought misery along the central U.S. Gulf Coast. The storm knocked out power, caused floods and spawned several tornadoes. It was responsible for at least one death, when a large piece of a tree fell on a mobile home in Pensacola, Florida, killing a 10-month-old baby.

Flash flood watches were out from the Florida Panhandle west to as far north as Illinois as Gordon moved farther inland.

Meanwhile, forecasters were watching Florence, a strong Category 4 storm that was about 2,000 kilometers (1,240 miles) east of Bermuda as of late Wednesday.

Forecasters predicted Florence would weaken a bit over the next few days but would still be a powerful storm as it crept closer to Bermuda and the U.S. East Coast. That arrival was expected early next week.

Florence would be the first major Atlantic hurricane of the season to make landfall.
…

Demonstrators in Washington mark the one year anniversary of Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya by demanding more economic sanctions and recognition by the U.S. that what happened to the Rohingya was genocide. Anna Kook reports from Capitol Hill for VOA.
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Demonstrators in Washington mark the one year anniversary of Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya by demanding more economic sanctions and recognition by the U.S. that what happened to the Rohingya was genocide. Anna Kook reports from Capitol Hill for VOA.
…

She is many things that would seem to irritate President Donald Trump: a liberal Canadian former journalist.

That makes Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland an unusual choice to lead Canada’s negotiations over a new free trade deal with a surprisingly hostile U.S. administration.

Recruited into politics by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Freeland has already clashed with Russia and Saudi Arabia. Those who know her say she’s unlikely to back down in a confrontation with Trump.

“She is everything the Trump administration loathes,” said Sarah Goldfeder, a former official with the U.S. Embassy in Canada.

Freeland, a globalist negotiating with a U.S. administration that believes in economic nationalism and populism, hopes to salvage a free trade deal with Canada’s largest trading partner as talks resumed Wednesday in Washington. The 50-year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar speaks five languages and has influential friends around the world.

“I have enormous sympathy for her because she is negotiating with an unpredictable, irrational partner,” said CNN host Fareed Zakaria, a friend of Freeland’s for 25 years.

Freeland cut short a trip to Europe last week after Trump reached a deal with Mexico that excluded Canada. Talks with Canada resumed but Trump said he wasn’t willing to make any concessions.

The Trump administration left Canada out of the talks for five weeks not long after the president vowed to make Canada pay after Trudeau said at the G-7 in Quebec he wouldn’t let Canada get pushed around in trade talks. Freeland then poked the U.S. when she received Foreign Policy magazine’s diplomat of the year award in Washington.

“You may feel today that your size allows you to go mano-a-mano with your traditional adversaries and be guaranteed to win,” Freeland said in the June speech. “But if history tells us one thing, it is that no one nation’s pre-eminence is eternal.”

Despite being the chief negotiator with the Trump administration, Freeland has criticized it when few other leaders of Western democracies have.

“She’s an extremely strong-willed and capable young woman, and I think Trump generally has a problem with that,” said Ian Bremmer, a longtime friend and foreign affairs columnist and president of the Eurasia Group. “She’s not going to bat her eyelashes at Trump to get something done. That’s not Chrystia. She doesn’t play games.”

After Freeland and her department tweeted criticism of Saudi Arabia last month for the arrest of social activists in the kingdom, Canada suffered consequences. The Saudis suspended diplomatic relations and canceled new trade with Canada and sold off Canadian assets.

Peter MacKay, a former Canadian foreign minister, said public shaming like that doesn’t work and said some Americans viewed her June speech in Washington as something less than diplomatic.

“It was around that time, within days, that the U.S. threw Canada out of the room,” MacKay said. “There is sometimes concern that she is taking the lead from her prime minister by playing a little bit to a domestic audience.”

Trudeau personally recruited Freeland to join his Liberal Party while it was the third party in Parliament in 2013. Freeland had a senior position at the Reuters news agency but was ready to move on after setbacks in her journalism career, said Martin Wolf, an influential Financial Times columnist and longtime friend.

Freeland previously had risen rapidly at the Financial Times where she became Moscow bureau chief in her mid-20s during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Freeland also served as deputy editor of the Globe and Mail in Toronto and the Financial Times. She had designs on becoming editor of the Financial Times but left after a clash with the top editor. She was familiar to many TV viewers in the U.S. because of her regular appearances on talk shows like Zakaria’s.

“She was a godsend for us, frankly, because she is so bright and so talented and articulate,” Zakaria said. “She is as about as impressive a person as I have met.”

Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage, also wrote a well-received book on Russia and left journalism for politics in 2013 when she won a district in Toronto. She has been a frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who banned her from traveling to the country in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanctions against Moscow.

She remains chummy with journalists, even bringing them frozen treats in 90-degree heat last week while they waited outside the U.S. Trade Representative office in Washington.

Bremmer, who met Freeland in Kiev in 1992, good-naturedly chided her for a strange foible: a habit of writing notes on her hands even when she has notepads.

“I have seen in her environments with foreign ministers and heads of state with stuff on her hands,” he said with a laugh.

Throughout her career, Freeland has cultivated an impressive group of friends. Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, is a godfather to one of her three children. Friends include Larry Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, and billionaires George Soros and Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group chief executive who once led one of Trump’s disbanded business councils.

“I always found her to be extremely smart and easy to talk with,” Schwarzman said. “She accessible and direct and quick. You don’t get to be a Rhodes scholar by accident.”

Summers is a mentor from Harvard.

“Her clarity of thought, straightforwardness and deep sense of principle make her an ideal leader of the international community as it responds to highly problematic American policy,” Summers said in an email.

Bremmer said Freeland has serious globalist credentials, “but right now, momentum is not with that group globally.”

When Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, he named Freeland to his Cabinet. She served as international trade minister and worked on ensuring that a free trade deal with the European Union didn’t unravel. At one point, she left stalled talks near tears after saying it had been impossible to overcome differences. An agreement was reached not long after that, and Freeland received credit.

Now she’s facing her toughest challenge with the North American Free Trade Agreement, since the U.S. represents 75 percent of Canada’s exports.

“Canada is stuck with the United States. That’s Canada’s trade,” Bremmer said. “Canadians are going to have to swallow a fair amount of pride. They are going have to pretend they like this guy a lot more than they obviously do or they risk getting much more economically punished. That’s just the reality.”
…

She is many things that would seem to irritate President Donald Trump: a liberal Canadian former journalist.

That makes Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland an unusual choice to lead Canada’s negotiations over a new free trade deal with a surprisingly hostile U.S. administration.

Recruited into politics by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Freeland has already clashed with Russia and Saudi Arabia. Those who know her say she’s unlikely to back down in a confrontation with Trump.

“She is everything the Trump administration loathes,” said Sarah Goldfeder, a former official with the U.S. Embassy in Canada.

Freeland, a globalist negotiating with a U.S. administration that believes in economic nationalism and populism, hopes to salvage a free trade deal with Canada’s largest trading partner as talks resumed Wednesday in Washington. The 50-year-old Harvard graduate and Rhodes scholar speaks five languages and has influential friends around the world.

“I have enormous sympathy for her because she is negotiating with an unpredictable, irrational partner,” said CNN host Fareed Zakaria, a friend of Freeland’s for 25 years.

Freeland cut short a trip to Europe last week after Trump reached a deal with Mexico that excluded Canada. Talks with Canada resumed but Trump said he wasn’t willing to make any concessions.

The Trump administration left Canada out of the talks for five weeks not long after the president vowed to make Canada pay after Trudeau said at the G-7 in Quebec he wouldn’t let Canada get pushed around in trade talks. Freeland then poked the U.S. when she received Foreign Policy magazine’s diplomat of the year award in Washington.

“You may feel today that your size allows you to go mano-a-mano with your traditional adversaries and be guaranteed to win,” Freeland said in the June speech. “But if history tells us one thing, it is that no one nation’s pre-eminence is eternal.”

Despite being the chief negotiator with the Trump administration, Freeland has criticized it when few other leaders of Western democracies have.

“She’s an extremely strong-willed and capable young woman, and I think Trump generally has a problem with that,” said Ian Bremmer, a longtime friend and foreign affairs columnist and president of the Eurasia Group. “She’s not going to bat her eyelashes at Trump to get something done. That’s not Chrystia. She doesn’t play games.”

After Freeland and her department tweeted criticism of Saudi Arabia last month for the arrest of social activists in the kingdom, Canada suffered consequences. The Saudis suspended diplomatic relations and canceled new trade with Canada and sold off Canadian assets.

Peter MacKay, a former Canadian foreign minister, said public shaming like that doesn’t work and said some Americans viewed her June speech in Washington as something less than diplomatic.

“It was around that time, within days, that the U.S. threw Canada out of the room,” MacKay said. “There is sometimes concern that she is taking the lead from her prime minister by playing a little bit to a domestic audience.”

Trudeau personally recruited Freeland to join his Liberal Party while it was the third party in Parliament in 2013. Freeland had a senior position at the Reuters news agency but was ready to move on after setbacks in her journalism career, said Martin Wolf, an influential Financial Times columnist and longtime friend.

Freeland previously had risen rapidly at the Financial Times where she became Moscow bureau chief in her mid-20s during the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Freeland also served as deputy editor of the Globe and Mail in Toronto and the Financial Times. She had designs on becoming editor of the Financial Times but left after a clash with the top editor. She was familiar to many TV viewers in the U.S. because of her regular appearances on talk shows like Zakaria’s.

“She was a godsend for us, frankly, because she is so bright and so talented and articulate,” Zakaria said. “She is as about as impressive a person as I have met.”

Freeland, who is of Ukrainian heritage, also wrote a well-received book on Russia and left journalism for politics in 2013 when she won a district in Toronto. She has been a frequent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who banned her from traveling to the country in 2014 in retaliation for Western sanctions against Moscow.

She remains chummy with journalists, even bringing them frozen treats in 90-degree heat last week while they waited outside the U.S. Trade Representative office in Washington.

Bremmer, who met Freeland in Kiev in 1992, good-naturedly chided her for a strange foible: a habit of writing notes on her hands even when she has notepads.

“I have seen in her environments with foreign ministers and heads of state with stuff on her hands,” he said with a laugh.

Throughout her career, Freeland has cultivated an impressive group of friends. Mark Carney, the Bank of England governor, is a godfather to one of her three children. Friends include Larry Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, and billionaires George Soros and Stephen Schwarzman, the Blackstone Group chief executive who once led one of Trump’s disbanded business councils.

“I always found her to be extremely smart and easy to talk with,” Schwarzman said. “She accessible and direct and quick. You don’t get to be a Rhodes scholar by accident.”

Summers is a mentor from Harvard.

“Her clarity of thought, straightforwardness and deep sense of principle make her an ideal leader of the international community as it responds to highly problematic American policy,” Summers said in an email.

Bremmer said Freeland has serious globalist credentials, “but right now, momentum is not with that group globally.”

When Trudeau became prime minister in 2015, he named Freeland to his Cabinet. She served as international trade minister and worked on ensuring that a free trade deal with the European Union didn’t unravel. At one point, she left stalled talks near tears after saying it had been impossible to overcome differences. An agreement was reached not long after that, and Freeland received credit.

Now she’s facing her toughest challenge with the North American Free Trade Agreement, since the U.S. represents 75 percent of Canada’s exports.

“Canada is stuck with the United States. That’s Canada’s trade,” Bremmer said. “Canadians are going to have to swallow a fair amount of pride. They are going have to pretend they like this guy a lot more than they obviously do or they risk getting much more economically punished. That’s just the reality.”
…

UU.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh pledged judicial independence from President Donald Trump in testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

“I’m an independent judge,” Kavanaugh said when asked by Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch for assurances that, if confirmed to the high court, he would not be swayed by the views or interests of Trump, who nominated him in July.

“I owe my loyalty to the Constitution, and the Constitution establishes me as an independent judge, bound to follow the law as written,” the 53 year-old federal appellate judge added.

Kavanaugh asserted “no one is above the law in our constitutional system” and that “no matter your station in life, no matter your position in government, it’s all equal justice under law.”  But he declined to say whether a sitting president, like all other citizens, must respond to a subpoena to provide testimony.

“I can’t give you an answer on that hypothetical question,” the nominee said.

The issue has particular relevance given special counsel Robert Mueller’s continuing probe of the 2016 Trump campaign’s alleged links to Russia.  Mueller has not subpoenaed Trump, but it remains an option in his ongoing investigation of Russian meddling in the election.

In the 1990s, as an attorney, Kavanaugh took part in an investigation of then-president Bill Clinton that compelled Clinton to testify.  Years later, having served in the George W. Bush administration, Kavanaugh wrote that presidents should be shielded from legal proceedings while in office.

Nominated to fill the seat of retiring Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, Kavanaugh told lawmakers he has not hesitated to make unpopular rulings in the past.  He cited his opinion in a case releasing Osama bin Laden’s former chauffeur, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, from detention at the U.S. military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“You’ll never have a nominee who’s ruled for a more unpopular defendant,” Kavanaugh said. He said judges should not make decisions based on who people are, but “whether they have the law on their side.  My personal beliefs are not relevant.”

While Republican senators posed many questions on Kavanaugh’s overall judicial philosophy, Democrats zeroed in on hot-button issues from gun control to abortion rights in America.

The committee’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, sought assurances that the nominee views as settled law the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, establishing abortion rights nationwide.

“It’s an important precedent of the Supreme Court that’s been reaffirmed many times,” Kavanaugh said.  “I understand the importance of the issue.  I don’t live in a bubble, I live in the real world.”

He described a 1992 decision reaffirming the original ruling as “precedent upon precedent.”  He said Americans “need to know the law is predictable.  Precedent is the foundation of our system.”

Numerous women’s groups are opposing Kavanaugh’s nomination, fearing he would vote with other conservative justices to restrict or eliminate abortion rights.

Protesters periodically interrupted the hearing.  One repeatedly shouted, “Sham president, sham justice.”

If approved by the Republican-led committee, Kavanaugh’s nomination would go to the full Senate, where Republicans will hold a slim 51-49 majority.  So far, no Republicans have said they plan to vote against Kavanaugh.  Dozens of Democrats have announced their opposition.

 
…